


In Which Mrs Rogers Hears The Grenade Story

by twilightshadow



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes and The Grenade Story, Established Relationship, Gen, M/M, Missing Scene, Spoilers for Cap 1, WWII era, Written as part of a collab, funnier than it sounds, i guess, post serum!Steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-04
Updated: 2014-07-06
Packaged: 2018-02-07 11:44:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1897758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twilightshadow/pseuds/twilightshadow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Tell you something though, you’re damn lucky it was a dud, or we’d still be scraping bits of your friend off the - ”</p><p>“Shut UP!”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Which Mrs Rogers Hears The Grenade Story

**Author's Note:**

> Right, the basic scenario is this; My tumblr is screwed. I can't post any of my own stuff, tag, comment, or send mail aside from fanmail. I have no idea why. 
> 
> BUT, the amazing darthstich, who posts beautiful Stucky headcanon drabbles on tumblr (involving Bucky Bears) posted a proper gem up the other day about Bucky's reaction to hearing The Grenade Story (you remember the bit in TFA when Skinny!Steve jumps on that dummy grenade to save the squad who didn't even like him all that much? That grenade story). 
> 
> So I had to get in touch, because I've been stewing on my own headcanons about that for aaaaaaaaaaages. Turns out we share headcanons about Bucky Barnes absolutely Flipping His Shit. 
> 
> Darthstich has two extra parts to this, which can be found on tumblr here: http://darthstitch.tumblr.com/post/90693267931/41-it-is-never-a-good-idea-to-piss-off-mrs-rogers
> 
> and here: http://darthstitch.tumblr.com/post/90729772181/in-which-mrs-rogers-puts-the-fear-of-god-into-captain (I DON'T KNOW HOW TO LINK PROPERLY I'M SORRY)
> 
> So call this the prequel. Do enjoy xxxx

Scant weeks ago, Bucky had been complaining (loudly, along with the rest of his mess-mates) about the slop the Army serves in lieu of food. After surviving on what HYDRA bothered feeding their prisoners (not much, at irregular intervals), he’s never been more glad to see the stuff in his life.

  
Steve asks if he’s eating it or inhaling it.

  
“Shuddup, ya punk,” he responds with his mouth full.

  
Oh, and there’s the other thing. Steve.

  
It’s a lot to take in. It’s been three days since Steve single handedly freed over 400 POWs from the HYDRA facility in Austria, two since the long hike home, and he still can’t quite believe what he’s seeing.

  
Steve Rogers, with the kind of body he used to draw in his life classes. Steve Rogers, who finally has the strength and vitality to fit his heart and soul. Steve, sitting exactly where Bucky has never been less pleased to see him.

  
He’s aware he’s staring, in the middle of the clamour and clashing of a crowded mess hall where anybody could twig them but he doesn’t care. Gentle, fragile, kind Steve Rogers came to war; and appears to be thriving.

  
Bucky hates it.

  
He only realises Steve is staring back once he kicks him under the table. “Hey. I’m still me, y’know. Just taller. And without all the chest problems.”

  
Bucky wants to tell him _I know that, but you’re here. You being safe at home was the reason I held out so long, you idiot, and I am fucking delirious that you found me but right now I don’t know whether to punch you or kiss you_ but he doesn’t quite know how to get the words out.

  
“I know,” he says instead.

  
The clatter of three more tin trays on the metal table startles him into dropping his utensils and turning for a fight. Only Steve’s steady hand reaching up and touching his shoulderblade gently remind him that he’s back in his own camp, with his own men, and should have nothing to fear. Mentally he kicks himself.

  
“Hey.” The three guys standing the other side of the table don’t seem to have noticed anything out of the ordinary. Bucky doesn’t recognise them, and eyes them warily.  
“Hey, guys. Bucky, meet Johnson, Myers and Gilbert. They were in my Basic Unit.”

“Apparently,” Myers chuckles. Steve joins in, dropping his hand from Bucky’s back. “This is my best friend Bucky Barnes.”

  
Bucky nods civilly. “Nice to meet ya, fellas.”

  
“Mind if we join you?”

  
“Please do.”

  
Bucky glances between Steve and the other men. He can’t see a particularly strong bond between them and decides they’re just curious about Steve’s new look. His guard doesn’t drop.

  
The chaps turn out to be perfectly friendly, however, congratulating Steve on surviving his suicide run and reuniting them with a few friends, still in medical. Steve asks after them. The harmless small talk causes some of the tension to drain from Bucky’s posture.

  
“So,” says the third man, the one named Gilbert. “What happened to the 90-pound shrimp?”

  
Steve laughs. “I kinda outgrew him.”

  
“Ain’t that the truth,” Johnson remarks through a mouthful of slop.

  
“No shit. We all thought you were going to collapse and die two days in. Gilmore Hodge actually stood to gain a lot of money out of it.”

  
Steve frowns a little. “Doesn’t surprise me.”

  
“Who’s Gilmore Hodge?” asks Bucky.

  
“Guy in our unit. Tough guy, good soldier, and he thought what the rest of us did about Steve – that he’d never make it. So, he bullied him.”

  
“To be fair, there were times I thought I wouldn’t make it either,” Steve replies. Bucky resists the urge to hold his hand under the table.

  
“C’mon Rogers, his aim was to make you crash out. You can’t be nice to everyone.”

  
Bucky snorts, even if he is mentally compiling a list of things to break in this Hodge fellow. “Have you met this guy? Literal saint.”

  
Myers laughs aloud at that. “I dunno about that, buddy. I don’t think a lot of heroes have a suicide complex. Hey guys, you remember that dummy grenade?”

  
Johnson cracks up. “Oh God, I thought you were a goner.”

  
“Steve goes pink. “Guys, I don’t think...”

  
Bucky is confused. “What’s the story?”

  
Myers, Gilbert and Johnson glance at each other.

  
“So Colonel Phillips – you know Colonel Phillips, don'tcha? - is our CO, and he doesn’t think a lot of Steve either, but then again this guy doesn’t think much of a lot of people at first. You gotta prove yourself to him, y’know?” Gilbert starts. “Anyway, last day of training, we’re all stood around doing jumping jacks and whatever when we hear the Colonel yell _Grenade!_ at us.”

  
“Turns out we’ve not noticed the bastard just threw a primed grenade right into the middle of our squad,” Myers continues. “So what do you do? You run for cover, right? Except this guy here - ” He leans over the table to prod Steve in the shoulder “ – runs towards the damn thing and throws himself on top of it.”

  
Bucky feels the blood drain from his face. “He did what?”

  
“No shit. Tells us to get back, like he’s not about to get blown to bits in front of us. I mean, it was a dud, but – sheesh.” Myers looks at Steve with real respect.

  
Bucky rounds on Steve. “You did what?”

  
Steve has the gall to shrug guilelessly. “What else was I supposed to do?”

  
“Oh my God, you did not just ask me that question...” Bucky’s forehead makes a dull clang as it hits the table.

  
“Tell you something though, you’re damn lucky it was a dud, or we’d still be scraping bits of your friend off the - ”

  
“Shut UP!”

  
Bucky reviews his mental hit list. This Hodges bloke needs to be spoken to. Colonel Phillips is due a visit.

  
And then he’s going to murder Steven ‘No Sense’ Rogers.


	2. In Which Mrs Rogers Put the Fear of God into Gilmore Hodge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well. Hodge, the athlete, found his presence annoying. He was so easy to kick down it almost wasn’t worth the effort, but it was the way he kept on standing back up that made the sport fun. The kid might tip the scales at 95 pounds soaking wet but he had no idea when to give up. He needed to be taught a lesson, especially when it came to who was the Alpha dog here.
> 
> Then he jumped on a grenade. A dummy grenade, sure, but it cemented the image in Hodge’s mind that the scrawny little scrapper was suicidally crazy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By popular demand.
> 
> Well, actually, I realised I had to write this because there is no way Bucky would have let Hodge's treatment of Steve slide. 
> 
> Also, the guy's a misogynistic prick. He totally had this coming.

Gilmore Hodge was the star quarterback, the most popular guy in his school. Dames wanted him, jocks wanted to be him. The day he enlisted in the US Army was the proudest of his life. His father called him “The model of a true American citizen.”

He was not best pleased, therefore, to discover his SO was a dame; moreover, a British dame with a mean left hook and the ear of their CO. He was even less pleased to discover that there was a scrawny asthmatic blonde kid (who had to be here as some kind of joke. What was his name? Roscoe? Runty? Runty’s good enough) that they were expected to treat as an equal.

The betting pool had been his idea. Covertly, in a corner of the barracks. No reason to give the guy a complex about proving them wrong.

“Hey, how much do you wanna wager that the skinny dude won’t last the week? I’ll put $5 on three days”

The other guys followed along because they thought it was funny. The pool was somewhere in the region of $50. Hodge never believed for a second that anyone on the squad really supported the skinny guy, so he saw no reason to let up trying to get the guy kicked out of the squad; especially now there was money riding on it.

It was the only reason he could find for the other guys occasionally telling him to, “Hey, cool it man. You want him out, you don’t wanna kill him, right?” They didn’t want to lose their money.

Well. Hodge, the athlete, found his presence annoying. He was so easy to kick down it almost wasn’t worth the effort, but it was the way he kept on standing back up that made the sport fun. The kid might tip the scales at 95 pounds soaking wet but he had no idea when to give up. He needed to be taught a lesson, especially when it came to who was the Alpha dog here.

Then he jumped on a grenade. A dummy grenade, sure, but it cemented the image in Hodge’s mind that the scrawny little scrapper was suicidally crazy.

Worse, he was the lucky choice. Picked out of all of them to become this ‘new breed of super-soldier.’ That irked Hodge, the top dog in the squad, the best of the best men.

So Runty (Radford, Retfords, whatever the fuck his name was) disappeared, off to God knows where, Hodge was assigned a regiment and deployed away to Europe. He thought that was the end of that.

***

Hodge went to war thinking of the glory. He didn’t know glory meant blood, and guts, and stink, and mud. He didn’t think it meant fear, and screams and pain.

He wasn’t at Azzano, but some guys he knew were. They never came back.

The promise of USO girls (despite the presence of Captain America – and, seriously, who thinks up this shit?) did some to cheer them up, but once the show was over and the girls had been spirited away somewhere, it was back to the muck and the mud, and food that barely trumped C-rations.

Hodge was bored, there was no other word for it. Bored, and tired of nightmares and cold showers. And the last show had been cancelled because Captain America had, for some reason, disappeared off the map (crazy punk, he’s surrounded by dancing girls 24/7, and he chooses to go AWOL? What’s his problem?) so he’s left staring at the canvas roof of his tent when he’s not out drilling.

And then two days later  Captain America marches back into town at the head of a several-hundred strong column of POWs.

He hears the happy shouts and men running first, then cheers and applause. He ducks out of his tent to see what’s happening.

Hodge is deeply confused. The Captain is a costumed performer, a dancing monkey, no military training whatsoever, so how the fuck has he managed to pull off that kind of suicide run?

He thinks it must be for the cameras, except he can’t see any rolling. And the weapons some of these POWs are carrying look more like something out of a sci-fi comic book than a newsreel.

Something doesn’t add up. Hodge doesn’t have the brainpower to figure it out, so he goes to find his teammates. As he threads through the throng of servicemen he catches sight of the Captain’s face and – Holy Shit. It’s Runty. Roberts, Raminsky, whatever the fuck his name was. He’s put on six inches and at least 200 pounds of muscle, looks like someone even Hodge’d think twice about going up against. He walks next to a stocky man, about two inches shorter than him who carries his weapon like he intends to use it.

Well. Shit. Looks like the crazy skinny dude might have had some use after all.

 ***

Hodge knows he will have a hangover come the morning. He doesn’t think the battalion has stopped celebrating for the last two days. He can’t say he’s complaining.

He drifts in and out of the uneasy sleep of the inebriated. He can’t shake the feeling that someone is watching him. He blames it on the moonshine. Whatever the fuck the guys managed to scrounge up, it’s fucking lethal.

Something moves in the shadows of his tent.

Hodge’s reactions are slowed by the alcohol, but not that slow. In a flash he’s pulled a knife out from under his pillow, rolled off his bed, and settles into a fighting stance (and then has to blink a few times and catch himself on the side of the bed because the whole world just started spinning).

“The fuck...’s that?” he slurs.

The shadow doesn’t move.

 “Delaney, is that you, ya dumb son’v a bitch? Cause this ain’t frucking funny...”

The shadow moves forward and coalesceles into an unfamiliar man. Or is he familiar? Hodge doesn’t know any more. (Damn that moonshine. Whiskey. Whatever.)

Before Hodge can react, he’s thrown a right hook that squarely breaks his nose.

“OW! Holy...fuckin’ Christ man, what is your problem?”

A strong Brooklyn dialect answers.

“You wanna know what my problem is? You. Picking on the little dude.”

“The fuck? Which little dude?”

A left hook catches his eye. Hodge goes down on one knee, cursing. “The hell is your damage?”

“The little dude you might have known as Steve Rogers.”

“Rogers? Was that his name? I just called him Runty – OW!” A well aimed kick bruises a rib or two.

“Don’t be a crybaby, now. You’ve got so much drink in you this shouldn’t even hurt. Unless you’re enjoying being kicked to the curb. Are you?”

Hodge’s breathing hurts. He spits blood from his mouth from where it’s pouring in from his nose.

“Hey, asshole. I asked you a question.”

“No I'm fucking not, why the fuck should I be, it fucking hurts, dumbass!”

The man raises his eyebrows. “Good answer. Next time, try picking on someone your own size, or better still, don’t pick on them at all. It’s not as nice on the receiving end, is it?”

Hodge figures he must be dreaming, except dreams don’t usually hurt this much.

The man stands. “My name’s Bucky. Bucky Barnes. You pick on anyone in this camp again, my best guy – buddy - Steve’ll kill ya. And if you go near Steve again, I’ll kill ya. You have a good sleep now.”

And he’s gone as suddenly as he came.

 ***

Hodge tells them he tripped over while drunk when medical asks him about his nose and black eye.

He asks around at lunch about a guy named Bucky Barnes. His messmates look significantly at each other.

“The man’s a fucking ghost,” says Jacobs. “Best sharpshooter in the 107th. He and Captain America have been friends since they were about five.”

Shit. The guy’s a fucking sniper.

Hodge is screwed.

 ***

(“Bucky, you’re a terrible human being,” says Steve, when word gets back to him.

"Eh. You love me. Punk."

"Unfortunately I do. Jerk.")


End file.
